60% students against using internal marks for Class XII score: Survey – Times of India

The online survey, led by the study abroad platform The WorldGrad, was conducted among more than 4,000 users who registered on the platform in the last two months.

It showed that 60 per cent of the students do not think that it is a good idea to use pre-boards and internal school marks to calculate their Calss XII results.

On June 1, the Centre had decided to cancel the CBSE Class XII board exams for 2021 in view of the prevailing Covid-19 situation in the country.

The Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) has also scrapped the ISC (Class XII) exams for this year, saying that a scheme for evaluating the students will be announced soon.

Many state boards have also cancelled the Class XII board exams in their respective states.

Following the cancellation, speculation is rife on what would be the methodology to calculate the Class XII board scores.

“CBSE and CISCE may ask the schools to submit their internal scores and most likely combine them with class X and XI results. This process is likely to take another month, maybe more, which means the results will be announced by July or August,” Abhinav Mital, Co-Founder, The WorldGrad, said in a statement.

“However, based on the survey, it is likely that the students will not be happy with this methodology. There are two reasons for it. Firstly, this year all the internal examinations have been conducted online with most schools struggling with the modality. Students and parents have little confidence in the internal assessments conducted.

“Secondly, the students always use the final examinations to prepare and improve their performance and maximise their results, which will not happen this time,” he added.

The survey also showed that 80 per cent of the students have given a pre-board exams, but only 55 per cent have received the results. However, regardless of whether they have received the results, 60 per cent of the students are not in favour of using these for their final scores.

“Nearly half the students haven’t even gotten formal results from the schools, which suggests that schools haven’t really formalised anything. We have heard from some of our students that schools have just ‘shown’ them marks online during Zoom calls,” Mital said.

Meanwhile, the Education Ministry has constituted a 12-member committee which will decide the basis of evaluation for declaring the results of Class XII students. But the process could take over two months.

Mital noted that if the students’ feedbacks are considered, the boards may face a more complicated situation than expected where many schools may not be in a position to produce bankable scores, and some may even have to conduct fresh exams to produce them. This could very well see results being pushed to the end of August.

“For study abroad aspirants, this could be a major blow. Any delay beyond July means they may miss out the September intake cycle. To streamline this, the study abroad platforms like The WorldGrad have introduced pre-enrolments to undergraduate courses on their respective platforms for the students who are awaiting their Class XII results,” Mital said.